A thoughtful history of affordable housing that establishes the basis for reasoned discussion and well-informed policy.
A history of the “common everyday houses” that have served large numbers of working- and middle-class households in the U.S.
Podemski—author, illustrator, and transportation planner for Los Angeles—dreams of affordable housing that’s light-filled and spacious, connects people to their neighbors, fits seamlessly into mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods, and has “the potential to change and adapt.” He seeks “a diversity of housing at a range of scales that reflect the unique circumstances of individual neighborhoods.” Chronicling his travels in a host of American cities and Vancouver, British Columbia, he focuses on specific housing types in each, including shotgun houses in New Orleans, bungalows in Portland, Oregon, and multifamily triple-deckers in Boston. The L.A. dingbat, built in the 1950s and 1960s, is two floors of wood-framed, stucco-clad apartments hovering over parking spaces, while the Philadelphia row house, constructed when the city industrialized, is a narrow, brick-clad, three-story home meant for the working class. With the exception of Houston, whose anemic land-use controls have given rise to wide, two-story town houses sitting above a two-car garage and crowding their lots, the author praises his examples for serving the needs of owners and renters and encouraging neighborliness. Podemski also offers a brief history of each city’s spatial development and considers the precursors and successors to each housing type. Despite his implicit interest in what can be mass produced, he includes two bespoke examples: Tiny Tower (three levels on a 12-by-20-foot footprint) in Philadelphia and 3106 St. Thomas Street (10.5 by 45 feet, metal clad, one story) in New Orleans. Podemski makes two important points: First, the vibrancy of a neighborhood depends on its type of housing; second, housing affordability is dependent on lot size and housing type. His argument is convincing.
A thoughtful history of affordable housing that establishes the basis for reasoned discussion and well-informed policy.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780807007785
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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